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NOM’s Robert George “OK” With Beating-the-Gay Out of Young LGBTers
November 18, 2012






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NOM’s Robert George “OK” With Beating-the-Gay Out of Young LGBTers
By: Scott Rose Thursday April 19, 2012 6:31 PM

The notorious gay-bashing bigot Pastor Ken Hutcherson is in league with NOM in Washington State, spreading anti-gay lies, attempting to strip gay human beings of rights, and inciting to anti-gay violence.

Hutcherson recently told KCTS television that just as two parents with belts can beat the criminal gene out of their offspring, “discipline . . . Removes the gay gene.”

For a pastor to promote domestic violence is horrifying. When you consider how hard some people work trying to stop domestic violence, and to attempt against the odds somehow to restore the shattered lives of the victims, many of whom suffer from severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it is surreal that a hate-mongering pastor would, on television, promote domestic violence.

Hutcherson smiles like the smug bigot he is when he is prescribing anti-gay domestic violence. But consider this; In 2005, the three-year-old Ronnie Paris, Jr.’s father beat him to death because he believed he was going to turn out gay.

Domestic violence anti-gay murder is only one negative possible result of NOM’s associate Hutcherson’s public promotion of domestic violence against gay family members.

Do not fail to notice the sheer obnoxious idiocy of Hutcherson’s reasoning. In the interview — (his segment begins at about the 37 minute mark) — Hutcherson first says that there is no proof that gay people are born gay, but then he instructs parents to remove “the gay gene” by beating homosexual offspring with belts.

Domestic violence is not acceptable. Beating a gay person does not remove “the gay gene” from them, as Hutcherson fraudulently and hatefully alleges.

And, of course, when school-age anti-gay bullies hear an adult saying that it is possible to beat “the gay gene” out of somebody, those anti-gay bullies are motivated to carry out violent attacks against students actually gay and/or perceived to be gay.

I spoke with Ken Hutcherson for this article. He started by alleging that the TV interview had been spliced, to make it appear he was saying things he had not actually said. However, in alleging that, he was being duplicitous. The grotesque anti-gay bigot is so blinded by his gay-bashing ignorance, that he is not even able to understand how ignorant he is. He plainly feels fully justified in his bullying non-acceptance of gay human beings. He re-iterated his statements made in the TV interview, likening criminals and gay people. I attempted to get a clear statement from him that he does not advocate violence against gay people. At one point, he said “You can talk with any of my children. They may have gotten little raps from a belt, but they were never beaten; it was just to keep them in line. Now, that does not mean that they can not choose for themselves. If they want to choose the homosexual lifestyle, they can do that, they can choose unbiblically, but they will not be welcome in our house, because we do not accept sin in our home.” I then explained to Hutcherson that he was reinforcing, not lessening the impression that he thought that threats of violence, and/or actual violence against gay people are acceptable. I told him that it is psychological violence for a parent to reject a gay child, and that to intensify the psychological anti-gay violence with physical violence is barbaric. I told him that such brutal parental rejections explain disproportionate homelessness among gay youth. Hutcherson then launched into a ludicrous off-topic diatribe about how he has gay friends, and how no church in the country has as many people who have “left the homosexual lifestyle” as his. I told him that I had heard quite enough. I had received confirmation that he does indeed think that you can and should hit a gay child with a belt, and that by hitting the child with a belt, to reinforce the psychological aspects of anti-gay domestic violence, the child won’t be gay.

This sadistic bigot is a monster and a pig, promoting anti-gay domestic violence. He meant exactly what he said during the television interview; nobody had spliced his gay-bashing meaning into it. Let us spell out, for clarification, what a gay child in Hutcherson’s house would experience. The sexual minority child would understand that the parents considered him to be a “sinner” and like a criminal, because of the way in which s/he was different. The child would understand that any evidence that they were a member of a sexual minority could and indeed, would result in psychological and then physical violence, and that if the physical violence did not prevent them from somehow again manifesting that they were a member of a sexual minority, they would be tossed out of the house, no matter their age or ability to survive, to have housing and food. An eventual gay child in the Hutcherson house would be forced to try to survive in a reign of domestic terror, with a bullying, tyrannical theocrat father alleging celestial authority for keeping the child living in that state of fear, only because s/he was a sexual minority. As with all forms of domestic violence, anti-gay domestic violence is not love; it is a crime. An abuser’s justifications — (God said I should psychologically and physically abuse my lesbian daughter) — and victim blaming (You as a lesbian are like a criminal, therefore, you deserve for your father to abuse you) — while characteristic of abusers, are in themselves, part and parcel of the abuse, and never valid.

Because the National Organization for Marriage is collaborating with Hutcherson in Washington State, and frequently posts his gay-bashing statements approvingly on NOM’s blog, NOM, if it will not condemn his calls for domestic violence against LGBTers, is complicit in those calls for domestic violence.

I requested comment from NOM’s Founder, Chairman Emeritus, and mastermind the Princeton Professor Robert George. I received no reply. The e-mail was copied to NOM’s Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown and John Eastman. Additionally, it was copied to Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman, who permits George to publish gay-bashing lies with the Princeton name attached, even though doing so violates Princeton’s Code of Conduct.

It is crucial to understand that, definitively; 1) the gay-bashing religious right, and 2) the Republican establishment are inseparable powers.

Romney signed Robert George’s NOM’s anti-gay pledge. George wrote a Supreme Court brief saying that gays should be thrown in jail for their intimacy. George also is on the Board of the Family Research Council, an SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group. When a congressman proposed a resolution against the “Kill the gays” law in Uganda, Robert George’s FRC spent $25,000 lobbying against the resolution, on the grounds it constituted “pro-homosexual promotion.” NOM sponsors anti-gay hate rallies, where NOM-approved speakers tell mobs that homosexuals are “worthy to death.” George’s NOM is pushing a Starbucks boycott in the Middle East, fanning hostilities against gay human beings there with no regard for their safety.

So it is hardly surprising that NOM’s Robert George will not denounce Pastor Ken Hutcherson for promoting anti-gay domestic violence.

But it should be out there — as a topic of consideration — that NOM’s Robert George is OK with, not just praying away the gay, but additionally, with beating away the gay. If George wants to clarify his position on anti-gay domestic violence, he knows how he can e-mail this reporter.

John Boehner recently appointed NOM’s Robert George to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. I interpret that appointment as Boehner’s signal of intent to expedite the NOM pledge, should Romney win, and to devastate LGBT rights worldwide. On Bush’s watch, in 2007, Hutcherson attended an anti-gay-rights conference in Latvia.

No child deserves to be beaten — by their own parents — because they are gay. Hutcherson is making a direct incitement to anti-gay violence. In his hateful fatuousness, he says that he was born black, but gay people were not born gay. What he might consider, is that black people have been beaten only because they were black, and he now is instructing parents to beat their children only because they are gay. What Hutcherson is saying is a lie. No matter how much a parent might beat a gay child, their gay child will still be gay. The gay child, beaten, might live in fear, and never talk about the reality of their orientation; but a gay child absolutely can not be made heterosexual through a beating.It is not OK for parents to beat gay children.

It is not OK for Romney and Boehner to be politically and materially supporting an anti-gay movement whose leader, Robert George, is directly allied with a major, appallingly ignorant anti-gay bigot who promotes anti-gay domestic violence.

National Organization for Marriage Plans to Incite Muslims against U.S. Companies
1
Michael AirhartNovember 10, 2012

The conservative Roman Catholic-Mormon antigay group, the National Organization for [Antigay] Marriage, reacted to the defeat of its anti-marriage initiatives in four states on Thursday by vowing to incite antigay Muslim opposition to U.S. Companies in the Middle East.

Large U.S. Companies such as Starbucks publicly support marriage equality. NOM president Brian Brown vowed in a conference call to incite Muslim opposition to these American companies as they seek to expand in the Middle East.Starbucks in Dubai

The American Independent received an invitation to join NOM’s conference call, and recorded the call.

“Their international outreach is where we can have the most effect,” Brown said. “So for example, in Qatar, in the Middle East, we’ve begun working to make sure that there’s some price to be paid for this. These are not countries that look kindly on same-sex marriage. And this is where Starbucks wants to expand, as well as India. So we have done some of this; we’ve got to do a lot more.”

Brown also said that NOM would continue to pursue a failed strategy of appealing to economic conservatives who object to social conservatives’ demand for big-government regulation of family life and religious belief.

Until now, NOM has received nearly all of its funding from a few wealthy donors, believed to be the Roman Catholic and Mormon churches. Brown and NOM national political director Frank Schubert promised key supporters that they would work to develop a grassroots network.

NOM’s Post Election Freak-out: Attack Starbucks, Defend Calif.
BY Neal Broverman
November 10 2012 1:25 PM ET
NOM president Brian Brown

After the antigay National Organization for Marriage was handed four stinging defeats on Tuesday, with voters endorsing marriage equality in three states and shutting down a divisive ban in another, the group is reeling.

The American Independent got wind of an emergency conference call on Thursday where the group and its leader, Brian Brown, plotted their next moves. The group’s mission is to “defend traditional marriage” by denying marriage rights to same-sex couples, but their fortunes took a massive turn for the worse on Tuesday when Maine, Maryland, and Washington voters endorsed same-sex marriage at the polls, upping the number of states with marriage equality to nine, as well as the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, Minnesota voters rejected a divisive constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, as well.

Brown believes their failures had to do with being outspent, as well as GOP candidate Mitt Romney not pushing his opposition to same-sex marriage enough and Republican strategist Karl Rove focusing on economic issues instead of social ones; the latter point goes counter to dozens of polls that put the economy at the top of the electorate’s concerns.

According to The American Independent, Brown promised to keep up the fight against same-sex marriage and asked his followers for more money. The group is also going after corporations like Starbucks which publicly advocate for marriage equality. NOM’s plan is to garner support in the Middle East, an area hostile to same-sex marriage and an area the coffee chain is interested in expanding in.

“[Starbucks’s] international outreach is where we can have the most effect,” Brown said. “So for example, in Qatar, in the Middle East, we’ve begun working to make sure that there’s some price to be paid for this. These are not countries that look kindly on same-sex marriage. And this is where Starbucks wants to expand, as well as India. So we have done some of this; we’ve got to do a lot more.”

Brown and NOM political director Frank Schubert also believe that their losses on Tuesday will help them with Supreme Court battles. Their hope is the high court, set to decide whether to take on challenges to California’s Prop. 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act, will not consider gay and lesbian people a “suspect class” now that voters in four states refused to discriminate against them. Judges often describe groups who are routinely subject to bias as members of a “suspect class,” and legislation passed against such groups is often scrutinized. How NOM will convince the Supreme Court that gays are now free of discrimination, especially since they can be legally fired in many states and are denied marriage rights in the majority of them, is unclear.

NOM is concerned with the next wave of states looking toward marriage equality, including Delaware, Rhode Island, Illinois, and California; the latter could see marriage equality reinstated this month, should the Supreme Court accept a lower court ruling that struck down the Golden State’s narrowly-approved constitutional marriage equality ban.

Regnerus Scandal: Researcher Lying, Not Independent From Anti-Gay Funders | The New Civil Rights Movement
►http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/regnerus-scandal-researcher-lying-not-independent-from-anti-gay-funders/news/2012/10/07/50176

Regnerus Scandal: Researcher Lying, Not Independent From Anti-Gay Funders

by Scott Rose on October 7, 2012

in Analysis,Bigotry Watch,News,Scott Rose

WHAT THIS INVOLVES

A study booby-trapped against gay parents.

The booby-trapped study is serving as a basis for National Organization for Marriage anti-gay attack ads all over the country.

The hoax study was perpetrated by Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin (UT).

The most outrageously defamatory of its false findings is that children of gay parents experience dramatically high levels of sex abuse.

Regnerus’s chief funding agency is the NOM-linked Witherspoon Institute.

NOM officials have a long history of conflating homosexuals with pedophiles, a known falsehood.

Nothing can so potently hate-and-fear-monger voters into voting against gay rights, quite like telling them that homosexuals sexually molest children.

REGNERUS DID NOT CONDUCT THE STUDY INDEPENDENTLY OF HIS FUNDERS’ ANTI-GAY POLITICAL GOALS FOR IT

The study design began in 2010.

IRS documents show that Regnerus’s study specifically is a project of Witherspoon’s Program for Family, Marriage and Democracy.

In 2010, when the Regnerus study was in its design phase, W. Bradford Wilcox was director of that Witherspoon program.

Wilcox, who is against contraception, sees social research as a “vindication of Christian moral teaching.”

Wilcox has confessed that in 2010, he was involved in the design of the Regnerus study.

Wilcox’s confession was forced into the open by accumulating evidence of scientific misconduct connected to the study, its publication, and Wilcox himself.

However, Wilcox, Regnerus, and Witherspoon president Luis Tellez — who is a NOM board member — are attempting to deny that Wilcox was acting as a Witherspoon agent when he collaborated with Regnerus on study design in 2010.

Even in his confession, Wilcox attempts to deny that he ever engaged with Regnerus about the study in any official Witherspoon capacity.

Wilcox alleges that his title of “Director of the Program for Family, Marriage and Democracy” was an “honorific.”

SOCIOLOGISTS SAY THAT WILCOX IS LYING

Philip Cohen, Ph.D. is Director of Graduate Studies in Sociology at the University of Maryland’s Population Research Center. In a comment under Wilcox’s confession, Cohen said:

“I find this description not credible. I do not think any reasonable auditor or ethical agency would subscribe to the idea that the “director” of an organization was not and [sic] “officer” of it.”

Dr. Andrew J. Perrin is a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He also considers that Wilcox is not being truthful:

“Brad Wilcox’s affiliation with Witherspoon is all over the place, attached to his name in numerous websites, flyers, talk titles, etc., and so it was certainly incumbent upon both Regnerus and Wilcox to recognize the conflict of interest, and it would not have required any significant investigation to note that conflict. If, in fact, Wilcox was one of the peer reviewers of the article, as has been the subject of conjecture, that’s obviously a further conflict.” Dr. Perrin continues: “the idea that this web of associations doesn’t constitute a serious conflict of interest in the publication of the article just doesn’t pass the smell test. The most reasonable explanation, given what we know, is that Wilcox, Regnerus, and others in their circle colluded to make an end run around serious academic review in order to get seriously flawed information into the public eye.” (Bolding added).

Witherspoon, meanwhile, has been desperately attempting to scrub its sites of all evidence of Wilcox’s associations with the Witherspoon Institute.

Wilcox, however, as noted by the sociologist Dr. Perrin, constantly used his Witherspoon Institute affiliation as a resume booster. To see abundant evidence of Wilcox’s affiliations with the Witherspoon Institute, go here.

FRESH DOCUMENTATION SHOWS THAT WILCOX IS LYING

Fresh evidence demonstrates conclusively that Wilcox was indeed working as a Witherspoon official when he collaborated with Regnerus on study design.

Here is that evidence:

At the University of Virginia, Wilcox is Director of the National Marriage Project. Regnerus’s published study says that a “leading family researcher” from the University of Virginia was on Regnerus’s study design team.

This reporter sent an Open Records Act request to Regnerus’s University of Texas, asking for one very specific sort of documentation only. I asked only for Regnerus study consulting contracts that were 1) for study design; and 2) made for anybody from the University of Virginia.

On October 4, 2012, I received a letter from UT. The letter states that the university has no documents responsive to my request. What that means, is that when Witherspoon program director Brad Wilcox collaborated with Regnerus on study design, he did so as a Witherspoon agent — as a Witherspoon Program Director — not as an independent contractor through Regnerus’s university.

WHY THIS MATTERS SO MUCH

Regnerus and his funders booby-trapped the study against gays for political reasons.

Regnerus and his funders are actively and deliberately seeking to mislead the public into believing that Regnerus conducted his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for the study.

Witherspoon tells that deliberate lie in Question 13 of the stand-alone site it created to promote the Regnerus study.

Regnerus tells that lie right in his published study. Regnerus has written “No funding agency representatives were consulted about research design, survey contents, analyses or conclusions.”

Yet, very, very obviously, when Wilcox was Witherspoon’s Director of the Program on Family, Marriage and Democracy, he was a Regnerus study “funding agency representative.”

Regnerus clearly is lying.

WITHERSPOON, REGNERUS, AND THE STUDY “PLANNING GRANT”

Witherspoon did not just arrange for Regnerus to have his full $785,000 in study funding, and then tell him to do whatever he wanted with it.

Rather, as per Regnerus’s C.V. downloadable from his author’s website, Witherspoon gave Regnerus a $55,000 planning grant before giving him his full study funding.

That means that Witherspoon had to approve Regnerus’s study plan, before it would give him his full study funding.

In the period of the Witherspoon planning grant, Regnerus collaborated with Witherspoon’s Wilcox on study design.

REGNERUS, WILCOX, AND CHILD SEX ABUSE

Regnerus says that his study answers this question:

“Do the children of gay and lesbian parents look comparable to those of their heterosexual counterparts?”

Regnerus’s study methodology, though, did not truly allow for studying children of gay and lesbian parents.

The majority of Regnerus’s study subjects — as per his own admission in his study — were products of opposite-sex couples who later separated, with one parent going on to have a same-sex relationship.

In asking about childhood sex abuse, Regnerus asked his young adult respondents if “a parent or other adult caregiver” ever sexually victimized them.

The result thus is un-interpretable. The respondent’s heterosexual parent, or a babysitter, or a priest could have committed the alleged sexual victimization.

Yet, in their anti-gay attack ads based on the Regnerus study, NOM attributes the alleged child sex abuse exclusively to gay parents. Regnerus himself has done that on national television.

Regnerus alleges that 23% of his study’s children of “lesbian mothers” were sexually victimized as children.

Past studies of lesbian mothers have consistently found low rates of child sex abuse. The second highest rate for child sex abuse in Regnerus’s study is step-families, at 12% just over half that for lesbian mothers.

Regnerus’s “finding” has no credibility. Other of Regnerus’s reported results are just plainly absurd. In any event, it is impossible to say who committed the alleged sex abuse, and therefore, connecting it to lesbian mothers in any way is defamatory.

To connect a mother to sex abuse of her child, in the public mind, with no knowledge of whether the mother ever abused her child, is as despicable as blaming a rape victim for getting raped.

The numbers seen in Regnerus’s published study are not the same as those in the data files given to him by Knowledge Networks, the company that administered his study’s surveys.

Rather, Regnerus applied weights and controls and used other tools to adjust the number.

To know the correct weights and controls to use, a sociologist must be certain of the percent which the minority he is studying constitutes within the general population.

Regnerus only vaguely described “lesbian mother” or “gay father.” If his respondents said that a parent had ever had “a same-sex romantic relationship,” Regnerus counted them as having either a “lesbian mother” or a “gay father.”

However, there is simply no way to know what percent of the general population has a parent who has ever had “a same-sex romantic relationship.”

That is what one would need to know, in order to be able to apply a correct “weight” or “control” to Regnerus’s raw data.

It is absolutely true, that neither Regnerus nor anybody else knows the correct weights to use for Regnerus’s very vaguely defined, so-called “lesbian mothers” and/or “gay fathers.”

In sum that means; 1) that in applying weights and controls and other strategies to his raw data; 2) Regnerus and Wilcox were free to play around with theoretical population percents representing children of; 3) a parent who has ever had a “same-sex romantic relationship,” 4) moving the study’s “finding” number up or down, according to the result that Regnerus and Wilcox most wanted to be able to report to the public.

I directly asked Regnerus to explain to me how he derived his reported finding — that “23% of lesbian mothers’ children are sexually victimized” — from his raw data.

Regnerus refused to answer.

A sociologist who had behaved honestly with his study’s numbers should have no hesitations about explaining how he derived his reported numbers from his data.

DOES REGNERUS’S REFUSAL TO ANSWER THE QUESTION IMPLY GUILT?

Regnerus very willingly gives lengthy, rambling interviews to right wing religious publications, but refuses to respond to simple, direct, science-based inquiries about his study.

Subsequently, I made an Open Records Act request to UT, asking for all of the Regnerus study’s data analyses communications between Regnerus and Wilcox.

In reaction to that request, UT sent the Texas Attorney General a letter, asking for exemptions to my document request.

The UT letter told the Texas Attorney General that Wilcox was involved with both data collection and data analyses on the Regnerus study.

So, Wilcox was involved in collaborating with Regnerus during many stages of the study, including 1) when the vague way of defining gay parents was settled on; 2) when the vague question about child sex abuse was formulated; 3) when the data was collected, and 4) when the data was analyzed.

It can almost seem funny, that Regnerus claims to have “found” that out of every 2,988 Americans aged 18 to 39, six-hundred and twenty have never once in their lives masturbated.

As obviously untrue as that is, though, Regnerus and his NOM-linked funders and NOM itself are using his equally ridiculous, maliciously invented sex abuse “findings” to demonize gay people and to hate-and-fear-monger voters into voting against gay rights.

REGNERUS IS NOT EVEN MAKING A PRETENSE OF INDEPENDENCE FROM HIS FUNDERS

On November 3, 2012, Regnerus and Witherspoon’s Ana Samuel — a hateful anti-gay bigot — will be appearing together to discuss the study at an event sponsored by a Witherspoon/NOM affiliate, the so-called Love and Fidelity Network.

Love and Fidelity has its office space inside Witherspoon’s building on the Princeton campus. NOM/Witherspoon’s Robert P. George, and Witherspoon/NOM’s Luis Tellez, as well as NOM’s Maggie Gallagher are on the “Love and Fidelity” advisory board.

Also appearing to discuss the study with Regnerus and his funding agency representative Ana Samuel will be Robert Oscar Lopez, who appears to fit into the documented NOM strategy for getting children of gay parents to denounce their own parents to the public.

Regnerus recruited Lopez off the internet, and Lopez’s gay-bashing essay subsequently was published on Witherspoon’s “Public Discourse.”

At the time Lopez’s essay appeared in “Public Discourse,” Brad Wilcox was listed on the roster of the “Public Discourse” editorial board.

After I reported that fact, Witherspoon scrubbed Wilcox’s name off its editorial board roster. Witherspoon previously has been caught scrubbing incriminating, Regnerus-related evidence from its websites.

CONCLUSION

Regnerus, the Witherspoon Institute, and Brad Wilcox all are very deliberately lying to the public,in hopes of misleading the public into believing that Regnerus conducted his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for it.

Regnerus did not conduct his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for it.

Regnerus very actively continues to promote his study with his anti-gay-rights funding agency representatives, while refusing to take any science-based questions about his study from the non-anti-gay-bigot media.

New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

Anti-gay-marriage group conceals donors in Maine - News - Boston.com
►http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/2012/10/05/anti-gay-marriage-group-conceals-donors-maine/ehvuc7EB62348bhAE5FY7J/story.html

Anti-gay-marriage group conceals donors in Maine
By DAVID SHARP
Associated Press / October 5, 2012

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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A national anti-gay-marriage group that has fought to keep its donor list confidential omitted contributors’ names from its campaign disclosure filing in a referendum on gay marriage, earning criticism Friday from gay-marriage supporters who say it refuses to abide by the rules.

The National Organization for Marriage’s quarterly filing with the state ethics commission indicated its political action committee raised about $250,000, which went to a group that will soon launch television ads. NOM also declined to release donors’ names in a 2009 gay-marriage referendum, when it donated $1.9 million.

Maine’s law requiring disclosure of contributors has been upheld in the courts. For now, though, the 2009 case has yet to be resolved with the ethics commission.

Matt McTighe, campaign manager for Mainers United for Marriage, which supports the new referendum asking voters to legalize same-sex marriage, said NOM should be required to release the donor list.

‘‘Maine voters deserve to know who is trying to influence this election,’’ he said. ‘‘Maine law is clear, and NOM refuses to follow the same rules that every other campaign in the state must abide by.’’

Voters repealed Maine’s gay-marriage law in 2009, but it’s on the ballot again in the Nov. 6 election. Same-sex marriage is legal in New York, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C. Besides Maine, Maryland and Washington also will vote this fall on proposals to authorize gay marriage. Minnesota voters will be asked if they want to prohibit gay marriage in their state constitution.

Friday marked a deadline for campaign finance reports in Maine.

Gay-marriage supporters have raised far more money so far.

Mainers United for Marriage, which is leading the drive to legalize same-sex marriage, said $2.2 million was raised during the latest financial reporting period, pushing the total to about $3.4 million.

Protect Marriage Maine PAC, which is fighting the referendum, said it raised $370,000, which includes the NOM money, in the latest reporting period, for a total of $415,000, said Carroll Conley Jr., executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine and a member of the PAC.

Maine’s campaign disclosure law requires groups that raise or spend more than $5,000 to influence elections to register and disclose donors. NOM has argued that releasing the donor list would stymie free speech and subject donors to harassment, but the lower court refused to throw out the law.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear NOM’s appeal, leaving the state law intact. But the ethics commission is still investigating, and NOM is fighting subpoenas in state court.

NOM Chairman John Eastman said Friday that the situation is far from resolved. He contends NOM doesn’t have to release the names of people who gave to its general treasury, and he previously suggested there was little if any money that was earmarked for the 2009 campaign in Maine.

‘‘NOM has always been willing to fully disclose any donations it receives that are earmarked for a particular campaign,’’ he said. ‘‘The issue in the 2009 case concerns how the state characterizes donations in this regard. We will be working with the state to discuss any remaining issues.’’

_

Follow David Sharp on Twitter at ►http://twitter.com/David_Sharp_APend of story marker

Supreme Court Denies Appeal From Anti-Gay Marriage Group
►http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/supreme-court-denies-national-organization-for-mar

Supreme Court Denies Appeal From Anti-Gay Marriage Group

National Organization for Marriage may be forced to disclose funders in Maine fight. No action yet on Proposition 8, Defense of Marriage Act cases.